1. The Fifth Window 05:09
2. I Wonder How Many Miles I’ve Fallen 07:19
3. The Way To Hemingford Grey 05:54
4. Sunlight Cafe 05:57
5. Looking Back At The Amber Lit House 06:47
6. This Place Up Against The Sky 05:46
7. At A Small Hour Of The Night 08:03
8. A Wind Blows Down Turnpike Lane 04:27
9. Ten Mile Bank 05:36
10. The Green-Faced Timekeepers 07:52

When in September 2012 Steve Vai showed up on Guitar World‘s cover along with emerging shredder Tosin Abasi, it seemed like he was trying to bring some fresh air. After the golden era of the ’80s and’ 90s, the electric guitar had – according to few- lost its charm, had less appeal on new generations, despite the explosion of many shredders on YouTube, it was – arguably- less innovative than the past. Yet the Italo-American shaman had no doubts: guitar would have been the instrument of the future. When listening to Mark Wingfield‘s Tales from the Dreaming City it is easy to agree with him that guitar can still disclose planets of the musical system which we did not know about yet. The British guitarist seems not so much interested in what happens in the 21st century, while he is more busy projecting the instrument in the 22nd century. Under the shimmering melodies, the mysterious harmonies, the near-human screams of his guitar, he hides, visible to those who have the curiosity to search for it, a research that is pushing the boundaries of the instrument in a dizzying way towards and beyond the future. Through an use of technology decades ahead in comparison of the rest of the world conjugated with a melodicity that seemed to be forgotten by many guitarists, he creates a music of magic and mystery, bringing us into a David Lynch‘s movie, where he is the director.

Mark Wingfield is at his seventh solo work and two of them have been produced by MoonJune. He has now becoming a front man in the roster of Leonardo Pavkovic‘s label, being a regular collaborator with DwikiDharmawan, MarkusReuter, YaronStavi and AsafSirkis. The last two of them join him again after they did on 2005’s Proof of Light. Adding to those the long-standing collaborations with IanBallamy, JeremyStacey, RenévonGruning, ChristianKuntner. Finally. not to forget the six completely improvised albums together with KevinKastning. Wingfield is divided between the hunt for an alien sound on the guitar and the duties behind the mixer desk, which led him to develop a maniacal attention to detail. It is easy that his signature sound grabs the attention when listening back to his previous outputs, but above all a continuous research in the study of the instrument marks its career. Tales from a Dreaming City is a trio output with YaronStavi on bass and AsafSirkis on drums, as well as the additions by keyobardist DominiqueVantomme. A concept album driving us through melodies and solos. With the words of Wingfield himself: if Proof of Light was a collection of pieces I had written at the time, Tales from the Dreaming City is more a concept album. It is a set of pieces that have a common inspiration, an album of musical stories. For me, these stories are about a moment or an event in someone’s life, or a moment shared by a group of people. An album which pleasantly spans through sober moods à la ECM, hints of fusion-like soundscapes and surprising harmonic progressions, influenced more by contemporary tonal music orchestrations, rather than by jazz trios.

Tales from the Dreaming City start is a 22nd century guitar manifesto. The Fifth Window‘s starting melody climbs on a unpredictably modulating chord progression, before cascading through the diminished scale. Notes give rise to passion and tears through bendings, micro-tunings variations of the pitch -influences borrowed from Indian music, one of his interests- and though an use of the vibrato bar that would turn the heroes of the Floyd Rose bridges era pale. Each note is a world of its own, bringing out the devastation of most inner emotions, hiding the technological machinenery of the filter algorithms that processed it. Touch and effects reach a superior union: ideal union of feeling and machine, without any boundary between the two. A technological research on effects, but even more on basic guitar techniques: most of the unusual tones I get are from the way I play. I use a lot of unusual slurs, attacks, vibrato and pitch bends. I often don’t play any notes in a normal way. And because I’m not using the expected phrasing and I’m concentrating on creating different tones with my fingers, it tends to sound like I’m using a really unusual guitar sound or a lot of effects, whereas in fact I’m not.

Approaching The Fifth Window‘s solo, notes stay suspended in an alternative time-space combination: the initial note is maintained for a such as seven long seconds –Mark uses a sustainer added to his guitar. Then it is varied in pitch through the vibrato bar, which seems to give him the chance to reach any note and any change of chords. Whenever Wingfield seems to be about to go out of tune, we realize that he is always in pitch. Beck, Rypdal and Hendrix come to mind when thinking about guitar’s pitch intonation; but it is the example of wind and ethnic instruments that inspire the English guitarist. Mark Wingfield does not hide the fact that he has long ceased listening to music played by other guitarists, as he is more influenced by trumpet, oboe, voice, or perhaps by ethnic and classical music. A settling of ideas and listenings, which is at the core of his ability to rethink the sound of the instrument starting from the roots. These influences appear back grafted, chopped, fermented in his alien sound.

Machine and heart: he seems to be at the center of the convergence between the technical manipulation of sound and the visionary ability to see harmony and melody together. Long story short, at the intersection of Eivind Aarset and AllanHoldsworth. Tales from the Dreaming City‘s guitar is not just the continuation of what we appreciated in Proof of Light: we go even beyond the humanized, fringed, shouted sound, able to imitate the fluctuations of the trumpet, the treble of the voice or maybe the fluidity of the Indian sarangi. Taking just The Fifth Window‘s closure, it is a 22nd century guitar masterpiece. An ascending, then descending, nervous line, a force of nature doubled by a brilliant loop created live by Wingfield. Two guitars, which seem almost to dialogue with each other, resume part of the melodic lines we listened to in the previous part of the song or alternate past and ahead each other through the use of the delay unit. It climbs on the higher keys, adds the vibrato bar with slides or dry and fierce knocks. The filters seem to explode in a synthetic wah wah, the guitar lines respond each other and fall on a unformed mass of sound chaos. A devastating conclusion that tears at the heart.

Tales from the Dreaming City parts its way from the previous album thanks to the ability to create an even more homogeneous sound. It puts many influences on the table: fusion of styles rather than fusion. Wingfield says: I wouldn’t put it in any specific category. Most of the tracks on Tales From the Dreaming City are based firmly around a central melody and chord progression. To my ears, the melodic approach has something in common with the open lyricism of a lot of ECM jazz and harmonically it’s somewhere between that and classical music. There are elements of rock, and with the classical influences I guess you could say it crosses over into progressive rock. But there’s also a lot of improvisation going on. The ’70s /’ 80s ECM sound and classical music: the modal, dry, mysterious, sober and never overstated sound that made German label’s signature along with lavish orchestrations, with rich and extended chords showing what digital processing is able to by extending beyond the six maximum sounds capacity of the instrument. While listening to This Place Up Against the Sky‘s bridge the memory digs in the sound that distinguished European jazz since the ’70s onwards: the crystal clear cymbal sound by AsafSirkis, the harmonic progression led by MarkWingfield, who makes his way through a series of mysterious modulations placed on the background of Yaron Stavi‘s solo. The Colors of EberhardWeber or the TerjeRypdal of Waves era seem subtly quoted here. The three interact with heavenly pleasure erasing any difference between composed and improvised parts in the magic of the moment.

If Yaron Stavi is a longtime partner with Wingfield, on the other hand AsafSirkis,started working with him on Proof of Light. The three immediately showed a telepathic ability to dialogue with energy and kindness, even in completely unstructured contexts. Taking as example At a Small Hour of the Night, where the trio handles a magmatic and shapeless mass of sound to make it music. A vaguely modal soundscape opened by a guitar that first descends and then rises in a balanced give and take with the bass. Wingfield stops slowly on the tensions and the suspended intervals while Sirkis transforms the tension in a masterful way. In the central part Stavi is relegated to the lower register, everything is slowed down in a suspension of the time and space where Wingfield manages both the soundscape and the minimal leaps of the instrument with incredible ease. Time is suspended. Similarly in the ending of A Wind Blows Down Turnpike Lane, a song carried by a solid groove in mid-tempo, which is usual on most of the songs of the album, and with a recognizable and moving melody. The minute and a half coda of the songs made by Wingfield‘s solo shows shouts excruciating between aggressive slides or slurs, vibratos and the bar that goes up and down holding the listener’s breath.

Mark Wingfield attracts lot of comparisons, but there’s no one that’s good enough. Perhaps it is his ability to tell stories and give form to unusual and distant melodies with great easiness, a storyteller with few notes. Less is more, with this statement the English guitarist praisedJohn Abercrombie and his unrivaled ability to create a world with so little. If Wingifield’s sound seems so far from Abercrombie’s, it is nevertheless very close to the simplicity of the stories he told. Like in Looking Back At The Amber Lit House, a delicate and mysterious ballad, built around a simple yet sophisticated melody. The solo by DominiqueVantomme playing mostly on a continuously repeated note – like he already showed he is able to do on his Vegir– tells with mastery half of the story that Wingfield expands in the next solo. We do not seem to listen the chord changes, as much as a melody is floating, evoking new emotions at every touch. In Tales From the Dreaming City the music is telling a specific musical story which I’ve composed. When we play this music, the point is to interpret it with the intention of telling those musical and emotional stories as best as possible. When it comes to the solos, that’s an opportunity to expand on the story, to improvise something in the moment about the musical story that the composition is telling.

Tales from the Dreaming City is an emotional quest, almost a science of emotions, a journey into the discovery of hidden possibilities: the possible explorations of an instrument that has so much to reveal, the possibilities hidden in simple yet unexpected melodies. If you ask LeonardoPavkovic what he thinks of MarkWingfield, he will answer that he has not reached half of what he can do. Listening to what the guitarist did so far in his career, it seems incredible to think that there is still so much to discover. Yet, if Tales from the Dreaming City is such a quantum leap as it is, we can consider that other worlds are possible and MarkWingfield just begun his travel for the unknown.

Tales from the Dreaming CityMark Wingfield

1. The Fifth Window 05:09
2. I Wonder How Many Miles I’ve Fallen 07:19
3. The Way To Hemingford Grey 05:54
4. Sunlight Cafe 05:57
5. Looking Back At The Amber Lit House 06:47
6. This Place Up Against The Sky 05:46
7. At A Small Hour Of The Night 08:03
8. A Wind Blows Down Turnpike Lane 04:27
9. Ten Mile Bank 05:36
10. The Green-Faced Timekeepers 07:52